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Innovative, although it is often used to imply progress, technically only means to introduce something new and doesn't actually connote success.

That was the tack I was taking at least. SWTOR is often described as completely derivative. I was trying to find examples of where Bioware was trying to introduce something new to the genre besides their fourth pillar.

Aye, carry on. If I veered off track, it was for informative reasons, sorry!

There is a failed innovation and successful innovation. SW:TOR is all failed innovations because it is about introducing single player elements in an MMORPG but a watered down version of what you see in a single player game. It is just stupid and based on ignorance of the genre.

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While SWTOR didn’t make a giant leap forward for MMOs it does treat us to four innovations that make the game more enjoyable.

Companions

The companion scheme in SWTOR is an innovation. It comes from BioWares’ RPG single player games, and it provides the player with incredible support. First, there are the different roles the companions play; you can have a healer, a damage dealer or a tank with you at all times. Second, the companions not being used can be sent on missions to support your crafting, or to look for presents that improve your relationship with your companions; or, in the case of slicing, to simply make you some cash. These companions do not mitigate the need for grouping with other players to do heroics, instances, and operations. You can fall in love with your companion and even marry them. Way to go BioWare!

Story Archs

While BioWare is not the first MMO to have story lines, they have taken these stories to new heights. Your story develops your character in ways that previously only roleplaying could. These stories make you want to level up alts just to see what their story is. It’s these stories that create the Star Wars feel in the game. Luke had his story, now you have yours.

Non-Player Character Conversations

In stead of presenting us with text boxes to tell our story BioWare brings us the art of conversation with the virtual world. Some people don’t like this and skip right over it, but the immersion that can be had from following the conversations is undeniable. The fact that you can choose how your character responds gives you control over your character’s development and makes your story more interesting.

Crafting

BioWare breaks new ground in the crafting area by removing the need to spend countless hours farming for materials. Your companions can do this for you, for a price, of course, while you continue your game play. I find the crafting to be useful, something I can’t say about a lot of games. I have leveled to 400 armstech, armortech, and biotech. The arms and armor gave me better equipment then what dropped, and often better equipment than the quests rewards. Of course you can’t make end game quality armor, but you can make a suit of armor that provides a good beginning place for the end game. Kudos on the crafting BioWare.

Evolution is a slow process. Some want to see giant leaps in each new MMO that comes out, but it doesn’t work that way. Tiny steps in each new MMO are what we should expect. SWTOR takes some innovative steps that will be copied in future MMOs.

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While SWTOR didn’t make a giant leap forward for MMOs it does treat us to four innovations that make the game more enjoyable.

Companions

The companion scheme in SWTOR is an innovation. It comes from BioWares’ RPG single player games, and it provides the player with incredible support. First, there are the different roles the companions play; you can have a healer, a damage dealer or a tank with you at all times. Second, the companions not being used can be sent on missions to support your crafting, or to look for presents that improve your relationship with your companions; or, in the case of slicing, to simply make you some cash. These companions do not mitigate the need for grouping with other players to do heroics, instances, and operations. You can fall in love with your companion and even marry them. Way to go BioWare!

Story Archs

While BioWare is not the first MMO to have story lines, they have taken these stories to new heights. Your story develops your character in ways that previously only roleplaying could. These stories make you want to level up alts just to see what their story is. It’s these stories that create the Star Wars feel in the game. Luke had his story, now you have yours.

Non-Player Character Conversations

In stead of presenting us with text boxes to tell our story BioWare brings us the art of conversation with the virtual world. Some people don’t like this and skip right over it, but the immersion that can be had from following the conversations is undeniable. The fact that you can choose how your character responds gives you control over your character’s development and makes your story more interesting.

Crafting

BioWare breaks new ground in the crafting area by removing the need to spend countless hours farming for materials. Your companions can do this for you, for a price, of course, while you continue your game play. I find the crafting to be useful, something I can’t say about a lot of games. I have leveled to 400 armstech, armortech, and biotech. The arms and armor gave me better equipment then what dropped, and often better equipment than the quests rewards. Of course you can’t make end game quality armor, but you can make a suit of armor that provides a good beginning place for the end game. Kudos on the crafting BioWare.

Evolution is a slow process. Some want to see giant leaps in each new MMO that comes out, but it doesn’t work that way. Tiny steps in each new MMO are what we should expect. SWTOR takes some innovative steps that will be copied in future MMOs.

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I think the way they handled Crafting, the indepth stories with branches (bringing single player level story depth to an MMO) the companion system, and the fact that it was fully voiced were innovative. They took AOC Tortage and basically upgraded that experience across the entire game with regard to both voice and story. I wish they wouldn't tell you in advance if your choices are Good or Bad before making them, that would have been more interesting. I think there is an option to turn that off, I forget, but it shouldn't be in there at all.

I will come back to play my level 42 character once the game goes Free to Play. Current enjoying GW2 and coincidentally also level 42 lol.

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Originally posted by keithian

I wish they wouldn't tell you in advance if your choices are Good or Bad before making them, that would have been more interesting. I think there is an option to turn that off, I forget, but it shouldn't be in there at all.

There's an option to turn it off, yea. I keep it off personally when playing through a storyline for the first time.

I will never get tired of repeating how much I love this game. Never ever in my life (and im 50) have played more fun and great game. Everything done to perfection, great sw feeling, incredible realistic fighting, ful voiced questing (now I can not force myself anymore to read normal questing in other games or maybe only with 1st alt), movement of avatars that obey to laws of physics, ... everything. Have leveled 8 alts to max, 8 still waiting. Was fun for all. In all this time have not encountered a single crippling bug if any at all.

Can not judge however about pvp and end game as I could not care less.

But otherwise have played strait for 7 to 8 months ranging from half hour to 18 hours per day, time permitting. And still continue to be subbed despite in last 2 to 3 months playing other games, now of course MOP, then will return to GW2 or Rift, .... and then for sure back to Swtor.

Main problem as I see was they wanted too perfect game, have invested incredible ammount of money and time for this superb experience. They have decent sub numbers now but guess investment did not returned. Partially blame to haters. No single game in history besides wow had such hatting community. But there is no single game not being bashed. About wow, not even Blizzard will be able ever to repeat their success.

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The ONLY thing differing SWToR from ANY other game was the Mulitple Choice story lines. Period.

[ ... ]

Multiple choice = / = kill <-> don't kill

Personally, I had the feeling most of the "choices" I got to make boiled down to whether I should kill someone or let him live. The few times when I got to choose between two ways to the same end I always chose the shorter/easier one (funny enough that was a "dark decision" most of the time.

Also some decisions in the game had the whole dark-light, good-bad thing either upside down or down right arbitrarily.

For me the biggest innovation was something I can't quite explain about the PvP that made me actually enjoy it. I found my PvP side in that game - strangely enough - in Huttball.

Originally posted by daltanious

[ ... ] movement of avatars that obey to laws of physics, ... [ ... ]

You should try a male asura engineer in GW2 and run around with your flamethrower kit out. Stopping actually makes him almost topple over and try to keep his balance by extending a leg in the direction opposite to the momentum.

I remember disliking the walking and jumping animation right from the start in SWToR. Nothing looked like it had mass and weight. It was all very ... theatric.

2) The Music was simply hands down amazing. I'd trade in my Darth Malgus doorstop for another disc or 2 on the soundtrack. SWTOR had 6 hours of music in addition to previous KOTOR music.

AoC sound track is way better and most SWTOR soundtrack doesn't even feels like SW music at all.

3) The artwork was brilliant. Any envirornment felt like Star Wars, even if the game wasn't Star Wars'y. When you got close to objects they got clearer (you could read a computer screen if you walked up to it).

Hoth and Tattoine doesn't even feel like in the movie: as desert worlds. Most of the environments doesn't even feels realistic. Ex military base set lower than the perimeter around. Turrets placed in useless areas. Settings that doesn't blend with the surroundings.

4) Added Star Fox! Wouldn't everyone love Star Fox instead of Pokemon? (OK, but gave way to maybe other minigames?)

SWG had 3d free roaming space sim and there is even way more 3d movement in Wow with flying mounts

The rest is left to everyone else to fill in!

TOR innovation was to have fully voiced quests and well lack most of the AAA MMO features @launch. Another innovation is to have mandatory pets for single player game play and no pet class for grouped content.

What made this game innovative to you?

Failing harder than TabulaRasa with an even bigger budget and time frame to make the game.

edit comment: I'm trying to put a positive light on SWTOR.

Positive: they can hardly make worse... (still they did adding even more CC in PvP in 1.4 and nerfing the less powerful classes: Trooper)

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While SWTOR didn’t make a giant leap forward for MMOs it does treat us to four innovations that make the game more enjoyable.

Companions

The companion scheme in SWTOR is an innovation. It comes from BioWares’ RPG single player games, and it provides the player with incredible support. First, there are the different roles the companions play; you can have a healer, a damage dealer or a tank with you at all times. Second, the companions not being used can be sent on missions to support your crafting, or to look for presents that improve your relationship with your companions; or, in the case of slicing, to simply make you some cash. These companions do not mitigate the need for grouping with other players to do heroics, instances, and operations. You can fall in love with your companion and even marry them. Way to go BioWare!

Story Archs

While BioWare is not the first MMO to have story lines, they have taken these stories to new heights. Your story develops your character in ways that previously only roleplaying could. These stories make you want to level up alts just to see what their story is. It’s these stories that create the Star Wars feel in the game. Luke had his story, now you have yours.

Non-Player Character Conversations

In stead of presenting us with text boxes to tell our story BioWare brings us the art of conversation with the virtual world. Some people don’t like this and skip right over it, but the immersion that can be had from following the conversations is undeniable. The fact that you can choose how your character responds gives you control over your character’s development and makes your story more interesting.

Crafting

BioWare breaks new ground in the crafting area by removing the need to spend countless hours farming for materials. Your companions can do this for you, for a price, of course, while you continue your game play. I find the crafting to be useful, something I can’t say about a lot of games. I have leveled to 400 armstech, armortech, and biotech. The arms and armor gave me better equipment then what dropped, and often better equipment than the quests rewards. Of course you can’t make end game quality armor, but you can make a suit of armor that provides a good beginning place for the end game. Kudos on the crafting BioWare.

Evolution is a slow process. Some want to see giant leaps in each new MMO that comes out, but it doesn’t work that way. Tiny steps in each new MMO are what we should expect. SWTOR takes some innovative steps that will be copied in future MMOs.

companions? i think Lotro had them before swtor

crafting? what crafting?

the game other than huge story and video conversations has none innovation

not to mention that the game still dont have things that are standard in today MMO times

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the game other than huge story and video conversations has none innovation

not to mention that the game still dont have things that are standard in today MMO times

SWTOR did offer full voice, although I would have personally liked in-game voice, without cutscenes.

DCUO had full voice first though, although the total number of different voice actors in SWTOR was unprecendeted. No innovation I can see, unless you consider spending a huge amount an innovation :-)

Crafting, yeah, can't see it as an innovation, although companions did all the crafting. Fallen Earth for instance, let players queue crafting while they played, albeit without companions. In Fallen Earth its just a time sink. If you wanted to craft a piece of armor or a weapon it would take X minutes / hours, depending on the item complexity, value, and/or usefullness. Crafted items would go on a countdown while you played. As long as you had the mats, you could queue as much as you wanted .. I never found a limit, though I never queued enough stuff to take more than a day to craft everything I wanted. Queue 20 items, log off, and the next day they were all waiting for you.

Story Arc's - each class has a unique story, even if it's uncontrollable. I don't think that was ever done to the level SWTOR took it. SWTOR's story innovation was never in question though, was it?

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The one thing (aside many others) that absolutely wowed me was how the cutscenes changed and adapted when there was more then one player. I started this game soloing, but later got a friend of mine leveling with me and it was like WOW!!! This is just amaziing!!!! How both characters (with companions) show in cut scenes and NPCs recognize class, gender and address you properly.

This is a thing that it so above and beyond any other MMOs - there's simply no comparition.

OK. The one thing I really disliked though /grin was that on the end of conversations most of NPCs for some reason turn their back to you. It was fine when I played Pubs, but my Sith can't stand it LOL.

Music is great, Balmorra's Forge is one of the best in my opinion, but I enjoyed all to be honest.